Thang Nguyen 555

A good friend.

A trip to the restaurant.

A handshake.

Holding the door for someone coming from behind.

Saying “Good Morning” (w/out a mask).

Our sanity in an otherwise normal election.

Civility and unity.

Raising our arms for TSA’s metal detectors.

Browsing at a bookstore leisurely.

Just breathing in public unhindered and w/out being paranoid.

A trip to the shores.

A group picture of soon-to-be old men.

More trips to hotels, theme parks and cinemas.

Dressing up even just for a funeral.

All we have gained is weight.

Hand soap (Purell) and toilet papers rise to the top of our groceries list.

Homebound. Trying to stop morbid thoughts e.g. the last machine we interact with is the oxygen tank.

No, thank you. I will stick with my laptop, laboring on my last blog….like in Amadeus, with Mozart and his last stanza envisioning his funeral….

The thing we lost in 2020: our normalizing death.

SNL’s “What still works” cracks my imagination opened e.g. Congresswoman Green casual ice-breaking: ” would you like to have a gun”, yes, a gun, not gum…( a scene came to mind, that of “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest , toward the end, when our native hero tried to be social ‘ wanna a juicy fruit?’”).

We live in a world and at a time that a Q-anon Shaman, or at least, that who he thought he was, stood where a moment earlier, the US Vice-President had been ceremonially presiding over traditional Electoral Vote Certification.

Yet, it still works. Our sense of irony, that is. Our non-stop curiosity, about how our society is functioning.

We have had the basics taken care of: food, clothing, shelter…and soon, vaccines.

So we aspire to higher causes, like Christian Nationalism, like White Supremacy, like Winning in Space.

On Earth as it is in Heaven…..but let’s start with “our daily bread”…

We are thankful. We have the internet, the computing power and medical infrastructure to mobilize vaccines.

It still works.

Soon, we’ll be able to travel again, to explore new shores and strange customs.

Perhaps the pandemic is dealing us with more than a curve ball. It shakes things up, jolts us out of our comfort zone. To once again see things in new light, see the world with new possibilities, see people with more potentials (there are half a million people to be replaced in the US when it’s all over).

More jobs, more possibilities.

I am curious. Will it still work?

Can we still laugh at the absurdity of how people react, how people read-into things and how delusional our thoughts and fantasies are.

Isolation and confinement can drive people toward insanity e.g. no more holding the door, greeting strangers or shaking hands.

This pandemic has shown the invisible and small (nano) can take over the world, digital life over our real life.

As a child, I’d rather jump, run and even fight than sitting idle.

Yet after a year of self-isolation, I marry myself to laptops and online world. It’s there where I project my thoughts, hopes and fears. I learn to self-reinvent, to leave my digital “foot” prints behind. Once it’s hard to have access to world’s information. Now, it’s the opposite. And I am over-loaded with irrelevant machine-aided ads.

Still it works, my curiosity and complaints. Of not having enough (good information) and of having too much ( bad information).

It used to be the priest, the politician or the professor who mediates knowledge and truth. Now, it’s just the machine which stands between me and the world out there (ethernet). Hello! Is there anyone out there.

I am curious if it works. As in SNL about Tom Brady. About Gamestop and Piss stop. About a pack of gums and a load of guns. About a sha-man and Congress wo-man. About God, gun and government. About truth and lies, righteousness and sin. I am curious if we can still return to normal (whatever it is, it’s now a luxury).

I need to re-activate my child-like curiosity, to jump and run, to explore and make mistakes again. If curiosity works and if experience sticks, I need “skin my head and skin my knees” like a line in “Season in the Sun”…

A return to normalcy might be possible, but our dreams of returning to Eden are forever out of reach. That’s the parting point of myth and reality, past and present, future and possibilities. Just curious, if it still works.

War end saw me re-situated at Penn State. Then, while in Grad School, after an educational film job, I read about Boat People. Their braving the odds at seas compelled me to “do” something. That something was a short detour from my Communication pursuit – “front-ending” my giving (time and energy as opposed to wealth which I had none, being on student loan).

One embarrassing incident: I had to pick up a waiter job upon returning. What section was my former film crew got seated? Mine.

Afterwards, I followed the Telecom trail for a good decade and a half (should have stayed on with AT &T as their data sales specialist during Y2K). Then I began exploring Vietnam, this time as an observer and a participant.

Post-war Vietnam moved full-speed ahead. Un-peeling layer after layer, one can find just about everything, even tacos and donuts (via expats’ import). Nation-wide, Vietnam mandated helmets and masks, measures which help reduce accident deaths and covid deaths. Post-war generation loves to “storm” whether it’s a Taiwanese company that polluted, or after a SEA game win. The bikes their new boots.

Upon returning – after being away long enough to experience reverse culture-shock – I noticed America as if for the first time e.g. material acquisition as a means to fill the void within : merchandise on Amazon Prime and fake news on facebook. And how one can go about his/her daily life, deprived of human contacts (even before covid). Having all the broadband connection yet none of the human connection, to me, is the saddest.

Of the 35 places they said we most frequent (and now should be avoided for fear of contracting the virus), none listed our inner space.

Like a character in Steven King’s The Shinning, we are all bored to tears, having self-isolated for the whole damn year. Paranoid, apprehension, compassion fatigue and self-deprecation (from survivor’s guilt – 500,000 deaths by end of February). We hate ourselves, for being born in this century, having lived through this year, and having to put up with circumstances not of our own choosing.

Some even went further in defying the reality of an election, and other facts of life like donning a mask, and staying home.

It’s hard. We are more “Papillon” (Steve McQueen) who escaped after his many trials, than Dustin Hoffman (who stayed in the island and planted tomatoes).

We are mad. Some turn it outward. Others inward.

Undertandably so.

After all, we’re social animals. Nomads. Hunters and gatherers. Even our phones say so (mobile phones).

Information want to be free. Don’t individuals want the same.

I don’t see how Apple can sell many of their 12th version this year. By all counts, it should be the return of the desktops.

Of Zoom and Skype, of wireline telephony and cable television.

I am bored, I am bored, I am bored.

Feet planted in the confine of the four walls, listening to “Day after Day” by the Badfingers.

Smack in the middle of winter. Feeling betrayed, self-betrayed. All those dreams, trips and experiences, denied.

It’s one thing to be polite and civil “Good Morning”. It’s another to anticipate stranger’s path and avoid him/her out right, purposefully and by conditional reflex.

if any damage done during this year, it’s that we have been accustomed to social avoidance and Purell.

We have turned inward, by circumstances. We have become “mad Maxes”, with long beards and less-than-desired appearances. On top of that, Social Media, as if not already addictive, provide us with planned self-reinvention….(on line, we don’t need to wash our hands, and stay socially distant), one of David Bowie’s many 1999 correct predictions.

I am mad like Hell (but I don’t drag the wooden Cross across the Capitol).

I am mad like Hell (but I don’t take selfies during a botched insurrection at the Capitol).

I am mad but I don’t plough my car into the crowd of genuine protesters to advance my cause.

Me against the world of virus, of elements out of control, out of hand. Season comes and goes.

People too. But I stay, become my full self, both adversary and friend. Although mad at the world, I need to make peace with myself. After all, it’s who I have to live with far into the future.

Reflections of my life. Diary of a mad man. Mine and yours. In the times of covid. Near the end times, but not yet the end.

Gate this, gate that e.g. Watergate, Pizzagate…now Capitol Gate.

They like to break in to the Democratic National Headquarter. Not once, but twice.

Each time, the perpetrator gets impeached.

Nixon smells better in light of what has just happened (his “Plumbers” prosecuted and jailed, but at least no one died near Crystal City).

Leaders stand and fall on good/bad counsel. (Many great counsels are dead authors but their ideas are alive and applicable. Just read e.g. the Plumbers broke in Ellberg’s psychiatrist’s office to obtain his private file….then got caught at the Watergate hotel…today’s equivalent of hacking and ransacking your opponent’s and 3rd-ranking in line desk and while at it, took the laptop.

Information want to be free??? That which is hidden will someday be shown from the roof top???

Just think. You cast your vote. Your rep goes to Washington to certify the Electoral Votes. Then all hell broke loosed. Do you think your right to vote is not violated? Do you think you yourself are not trampled upon by extension of your hunkered -down reps, your expression as a citizen and existence as a person?

Democracy was raped last week.

It was a short win for the “unthink” , the un-called-for, the fringes who stole the mantel, the barbarics at the gate.

I am glad people are pursued and put on trial.

Like the Plumbers. The President. After all, the Press themselves were put on trial and beheaded to obtain the truth for us. Why not this time, the table turned.

We cannot let decency and democracy be torn apart in one charge up the Hill.

Democracy cannot be in exile and run for its life. If any, it’s “Ape” men that should be.

Long ago, they gassed millions. The treacherous act must have emboldened Hitler with a sense of invincibility. Mao, Mussolini, Pol Pot and Kim Jong-un, all think they are on top of the wave forever.

Information want to be free. People want to be free. Freedom itself want to be free. History shows that. That it’s not the tank, but the resistance against the tanks…until they need petrol.

I still love that Chinese “tank man”. He was holding two shopping bags…stopping the line of advancing tanks. We have his contemporary counterpart in the Capitol, a lone guard. His name is Goodman. And he is black.

The Black guard matters. The “Plumbers” don’t. We know that much. And that’s the way the human race is. Gate this, gate that. Nixon, this time, comes out smelling much better. Like Musk topping Bezos, Nixon Trump, both X-Gate Presidents. In admitting defeat, Trump finally won ….as the most impeached President whose “supporters” overshadowed the Plumbers. They tried to free not just the files, but the whole file cabinet.

It all started with anger turned inward. Angry at lost opportunities, at myself for making the wrong choices, taking the wrong turns and blaming the wrong people – anyone but myself.

In short, self-implosion.

I am addicted to winning, to be better than others, to never quit, to not lose.

Getting pushed from behind, pulled from up front.

I exist in a society, a technological society, that pushes forward, with flow and fluidity (faster = better).

I am aiming where the put is going to be ( I-phone 13??? should be cheaper in Asia since 13 is not a lucky number. Try to locate the 13th floor button in an old European elevator).

When the water was heated up , I jumped to the frying pan. I don’t allow myself to simmer for fear of slow-boiled effect. It will kill off my reflexes.

So I jumped. Always moving, like a nomad. An angry nomad.

An ape man from a hunter-gatherer tribe. My allegiance is primitively “not to bite the hands that feed you”…whatever hands are at the time. I am a spontaneous man. An emotional man.

Easy as prey. Easy to sway.

I follow fads, crowds and persuasions.

I give myself to the fleeting wind. A waving flag. A certain persuasion, especially when it’s “a lot of people”.

I am a stateless man, without sensibility and sense of place.

I am online, off line and everywhere.

My home is out there, in heaven and hell (perhaps the truth is in between).

I am hopeless and live day to day.

I love heroes and project myself onto them. To join the immortals, “to pull a Samson”. I thought of myself as from a tribe (Sparta preferably), invincible Demi-gods re-incarnated. An immortal.

I live in 21st century. But my heart beats to the drumbeat of yesterday. I I I…always me, me, me.

No one else. What Republic? What commons? What contract?

I did not sign up for this. For smokes and mirrors, reflection of reflections, like Bruce Lee’s “Enter the Dragon”.

Trickle-down economy? Tell that to David Stockman. All boats rise when the waters rise? Tell that to Katrina victims.

Meanwhile, things keep flowing forward. Fluidly one-way. Time doesn’t stop. Neither do I.

I don’t want to stop, restless and rumbled. Give me a cause. Give me a fight.

Give me a target. I am dying, imploding anyway. Wanting to take people down with me. No masks. No vaccines.

The world has heartlessly passed me by…Opportunities have passed me by. Perhaps they floated South to Mexico, then West to China. It’s one thing to make a wrong choice. It’s another when you had no choice. I have been cheated out of good things in life..Of A Roman Holiday, of Marie Antoinette, of Casablanca..things I know deep down I don’t deserve and will never have. Except for the 15 minutes that Andy Warhol mentioned cryptically and prophetically. On Parler, on Gab, on TikTok, on Twitter, on Youtube and on Facebook……..

My 15 minutes online. On Instagram and Telegram which “steal” my attention and auction them up for ads revenue.

I left a footprint, an imprint and an impression. My handwriting, fingerprints and footprints. On this Earth, across the river, over the hill and in the cave, where I will eventually lay down and die an unwanted death.

I have never built anything. Only consuming them, complaining about them and trashing them around.

I am an American.

It feels as though a thousand pounds have just been lifted from my chest as I hear fireworks and even gun shots (Texas) marking 2021 arrival. Like an approaching train that is finally here. The beginning of the beginning. The Big Reset.

Well, I even re-started my laptop.

And I shed some old skin and some bad attitudes while at it. ( Been grumpy and morbid since Feb).

Well, you know…..(picturing my lower lip extended and revealed the lighter pink flesh)…

Yes, I have lived a roller- coaster life. So what!

I am still here (and regretably, not the other 2 million+ deaths – many notable and noble- from covid in 2020 – LAST year).

During the Vietnam War, an average of 19 American died per day except for 2 on that last day.

I still don’t understand what conflict can contribute to humanity (in above example, we’ve got the Powell Doctrine i.e. if you put boots on the ground, be damn sure you dominate and win, and not starting a wishy-washy war, since in war as in election, it’s a zero-sum game i.e. win-lose).

The 50’s sent us on the road to rebuilding and re-setting. Trying to catch-up with the Russian, competing for the Moon. 70 years into it, I found people living under the freeways, in tent, six-feet apart. Can’t be more “social distancing” than being homeless while trying to stay covid-free. I saw EMS vehicles in front of a nursing home today. Hope whoever they came for make it from last year to the next.

If 2021 sees us with a new virus, I hope it’s a good virus (like White-Hat hackers) to cascade and pay forward, the way Chuck Feeney, MacKenzie Scott…have… (as opposed to “cursing at darkness”).

Let’s hope the Big Reset brings out better angels in us, in me. I promise to change a few things, besides a new attitude . I hope it were as easy as my re-starting the laptop. Or posting a blog about a glass half-full. Which glass isn’t? Are you kidding? New Year, New You.

Gotta to have a goodnight sleep. To hit the gym. To stop the frown, and put on a smile. Who wouldn’t want to see a smiling person walking through the door. It lits up the room. In a big Re-set, one lives as if he/she hadn’t lately.

Of course I want to know what’s going on, where to find fish and where to avoid the lions. Thanks to those cave-paintings. It must have been painstaking to carve into rocks for instructions’ sakes.

From oral tradition to print tradition (Silk-Road written contracts), from electronics communication to digital communication, we want to get out of the box and the cave.

We are both nomads and settlers, both social distancing and social butterflies (the worst punishment in prison is isolation).

People pick up on and monetize on the fact we are creatures of conformity; social animals with awareness of social status.

I spent my first 4 years alone, most of the time.

Then on my first day at school, I was left in a room full of crying kids. I too cried, not realizing what I was into. Later, at a stern-looking pediatric’s office, I again joined other kids who cried in the waiting room (his hand felt extremely cold as his instrument was poking on my chest).

Along with conformity, we have our bias. We mis-perceived (read into) communication as illustrated by a Vietnamese tale.

Once upon the time, an army man came home from a distant war. Wife and a kid he never saw greeted him (his wife was pregnant when he left for war). Right off, the kid said “You are not my Dad; my Dad only comes in the night”. Of course, he exploded. His wife jumped to her death. Then our newly minted single-parent burned a flickering candle bright enough to cast a shadow on the wall. “There he is, my Dad”.

Message intent never equates message perceived. Along the way via a medium, on which it is encoded, it encounters noise, breakdown, signal jam and lag to finally be decoded into some resemblance of what had originally been intended (no wonder in the old days, they sent multiple pigeons and horsemen for redundancy).

People in propaganda know this. They can parley, distort and destroy an otherwise good message. Conversely, even with the best of intentions, we still fail (total vaccination, for instance). Jack Ellul in Propaganda says, ” the strength of propaganda reveals one of the most dangerous flaws of democracy”.

Then comes the money part. Some time back in the 60’s, we watched the Evening News over TV dinner, and flipped the VHF channels, from 2 to 4 to 7, just to end up with roughly the same commercials (blitz) on all three networks. At least, in between, we can still have a conversation, a common culture, and a consensus e.g. a far-away land, a controversial war (norm).

Then Cable afforded us more choices. VHS recording (not Betamax) gave us the liberty to skip ads (time shift).

While broadcasting becomes narrow-casting, still under FCC regulations e.g. rebuttal and retraction….or else, license revoked.

Nielsen audience ratings are KPI’s to price out ads rates, Gallup poll and Pew Research for political opinion. Marketers often lamented that they were paying for half of the household TV’s that nobody were watching, but no one knows which half….

Precious spectrums were auctioned up with limits on ownership concentration in one market. 1984 saw Anti-trust Law in full force with the break-up of Ma Bell. Media are required to serve the public interests e.g. children programming, PSA’s and Fairness Doctrine/Equal Time, Letters to the Editors and anti-libel.

Broadcast stations can only run a certain amount of ads per hour while DJ’s cannot take bribes (payola). Truth in Advertising was enforced. So was Communication Decency Act (=PG-13) within the Communication Acts of 1996 (section 230). (Tipper Gore, remember?)

In between literacy (print culture 1517) and the airwaves (mass culture 1920,1950) we had evolved from being citizens of a nation to being consumers of news. The press and the politicians operated (used to) on a symbiotic mode i.e. scratch my back, I scratch yours. Newsroom was completely partitioned from their marketing/business side. Katherine Graham, after inherited the Post from her husband, allowed Ben Bradlee to have full reign, hence, the Pentagon Papers and ensued lawsuits.

Then big boys e.g. Time Warner, Disney, News Corp etc.. threw good money to buy up media outlets, consolidate them as conglomerates.

With digital transformation and social networks, everything changes ( I- tunes for 99 cents, New York Times, also 99 cents per month). While broadcast stations are still required to test their Emergency Broadcast System, the APARNET, once invented for communication continuity in the event of a nuclear strike, has been commercialized. No longer one-to-one as in telephony, or one-to-many as in Radio/TV, the internet allows (many-to-many, and some day, South-to-South information flow e.g. S Africa to S America) to upload and mesh up. Gigs can code, hack and share (MP3 &4) across geographical boundaries. The results? Culture shock and cultural imperialism if not blocked outright by state-enforced firewalls. In short, society and politics are upending.

Delayed “narrow-cast” can now be viewed on facebook and youtube, with Web 2.0-enabled viewer’s comments…NOT subjected to FCC mentioned rules and regulations (un-regulated). Bad news travel. Fake news travel 6 times faster than real news. “Tech” companies, not ” media” companies, touted zero-tolerance on pornography, hate speech and school-bullies, can barely cope with Russian interferences in 2016 and 2020 elections’ protests.

Not only consumers of news, we are also cogs or co-producers – of an user-generated content and machine-generated ads apparatus. No longer do we have to wait for the Evening News. The news cycle is 24/7 accessible from anywhere. Mobile technology opens the flood gate for both mis- information and “dis” information. Propaganda is sugar-coated and unrestrained. Social networks become social MEDIA, while unburdened by FCC regulations. A match made in heaven: consumers’ attention for ad dollars, and consumer’s time to augment bots’ (machine) learning. Algorithms rule. Soft wares eat your lunch.

We no longer are in the flesh (off line) but exist only as data points (online).

The death of expertise (foreign correspondents & Editorial Board) and the cult of amateurs i.e. no more guard-rails and speed bumps.

Inadvertently, we help “bots” complete those captchas, auto-completion, translation and transmission of fake news. Our “volunteering act” both reduces product-development cost (we do ghost work for free) and helps Social Media capture ad revenue via evolving smart algorithms . This new micro-targeting: what we click, how long we stay on an article, what we share and re-tweet … helps capture higher returns on otherwise wasted marketing dollars.

Meanwhile, feed and friends recommendations walled us in our echo chamber and digital sweat-shop, to enrich Mark (fb) and Jack (Twitter): click, re-tweet, rinse, repeat..

Add an I-phone into the mix, social media could now “ping” us, like an Amber Alert, demand our attention, which then be auctioned as commodity to ad sponsors (many of whom have to do-it-yourself ads). With scroll feature, a powerful “mainframe” in our pocket enables a digital deluge that flushes our brain at the touch of an app (the chips are ever smaller and always-on). It’s a new symbiotic relationship, this time, not the Media vs Politics, but Big Tech and us (Big Audience/Producer), endorphin pusher and users of virtual drugs (no beef, still salivate).

Before we know it, Web 2.0 has become an instrument of exploitation and extraction if we let them ( Harvard’s drop-outs have become digital colonialists, botnets our lords. Robot, the name for slave, now our master, seduces us and uses our “reputation” as influencer to spread fake news). Netizens (people and bots) now number in 4 to 5 billions, all function as news editors and distributors.

What to do? Boycotting and missing out? rationing our use and access? Calling out and contributing positive content to balance out addictive and toxic ” social “media”? Or becoming a Luddite?

With its speed, scale and scope, Facebook Nation is 2.5 Billion strong (equal to China and India combined). It is the news aggregator monopoly, richest in data-collection and manipulation. Memories from past posts, our quantified and edited selves all sorted, analyzed and stored in the cloud….this virtuous cycle keeps feeding itself propelled by Network Effect, pumping dopamine right into our neurons with positive reinforcement from “friends” and “bots” – knowing we’re social animals with soft spots for “fat and sugar” in our digital diet.

How come those Macedonia kids got so rich – 2016 Election, who enrich Ryan’s World with a hefty $30 Million in 2020?. Currently, Newsmax and Fox News anchors retracted their slandering of Dominion Voting Software (per anti-libel act). Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Apple and Amazon took a sharp turn by cutting off the Commander-in-Chief’s account and cohorts’ Parler.

Now I wish we were back in the cave, reading (or braille-reading) those paintings. Forget the “good” times in between. Those TV dinners tasted no good anyway. And did we really have a conversation in front of the tube? (think Rob Reiner and his father-in-law, Archie). We always succumb to selective memories (that radio days were the best – “FDR’s fire-side chat” during Pearl Harbor brought the country together against enemies, foreign or domestic i.e. Japanese-American.

We succumb to conformity ( that everyone watched M*A*S*H* and our friends share this, then it must be true) e.g. Gab and Telegram. We, to a final analysis, are our worst self-propagandist and self-hypnotist. We belong to a generation of narcissists, prisoners of our own device, whose glass cage is an equivalent of Narcissist’s reflecting pond. A young author even coined the term “trick mirror” to depict her growing-up digital.

I think the future is better, only if man and machine got along. But then, any choice we make comes at a price. Our first news carrier, a runner, paid for it dearly with his life as he delivered the news at the foot steps of Marathon.

I should just leave this blog blank.

That way, you, the reader can just “read-into” it, before a single line is penned.

Such is the nature of pre-judging (a priori).

All men are mortal alright. But it is also true, all men/women carry a set of pre-conceived notions and expectations about life and its potential. Without those parameters, Social Security wouldn’t be able to price out our payments. So are the actuaries for our compensation and contracts.

How much is a man’s/woman’s life worth? what’s left of him/her after cremation for “dependents”?

What’s the cost of child rearing, of education e.g. a couple of hundred thousands to raise a child in the US, students loan/debt (depends on whose point of view), one’s expected earning potential and retirement benefits.

Our information-rich society is telling us we can now know (with prejudice) most of yesterday’s unknowns e.g. how many more months do we have to live (medically) and how soon we can travel freely (when 50% have caught the virus) etc…

No wonder cyber espionage is on the rise evident in latest hack to the Treasury of the US and hundreds of US companies.

Amazon is building its supercomputer also. So is IBM. And I am sure, China has collected (and applied shaming on) from its citizens…: who did not return its public bikes, who crosses the street on red lights…

We want the machine to be bias-free. Yet we know it’s human errors and human programmers that inject “prejudice” into those “innocent” machines.

Facebook and Youtube have collected a treasure trove of data on our Likes and Shares.

Amazon has zeta bites of consumer data to crunch (Recommendations software).

It’s we who enable current data-driven society. We who upload our profile, our photos and our places of travel. To the cloud. To the servers. And to the big Four.

Soon they will face the music (EU already imposed a fine on Twitter). Anti trust law. Privacy law. Cyber security measures. Imagine how enlightened we, the users, would be if we could access a fraction of that ever-growing database so far at the big Four’s disposal and exploit.

Just when we thought we have left the tribal village behind (as in an example of unwanted pregnant gals leaving the village), the global village pings us, beeps us like an Amber Alert in the night in a high-privacy high individualistic society.

If we manage to climb a few rungs away and upward, we get pulled right back in ( since we are so and so’s daughter …who did not approve of out-of-the-wedlock pregnancy . Of being gay. Of being handicapped.) Sociologists have coined such phenomenon “urbanization”: people move to the city, where it’s more anonymous, more impersonal to seek self-advancement and reinvention.

Many of us want to escape the past, to put on a new persona, surrounded by Likes and Recommendations (from social media).

Having paid so much attention to fulfilling work and (false) life expectations, we face a reality: what do we do with this stranger staring at us in the mirror? Do we know ourselves better than Amazon and Facebook (depends on how dependent and addictive we are to social media). Do we get all the positive reinforcement just from a machine?

The more click baits we post, the cycle reinforces itself. And we end up living alone offline, and together with people of the same prejudice online. There is a word for it: echo chamber, whose residents are all digitally walled-off. Always Us vs Them.

We find ourselves with in-bred view of the world (which world?). The only world that shrinks (golf partners keep dying on you) while the rest are growing, populating and pro-creating. At some point, we don’t recognize it at all e.g. France is battling the encroaching world of Islam. That which we don’t understand or pay attention to, threatens us. Again, all due to our pre-judgement ( that differences are worse and undesirable).

Don’t blame it on our tribes, our teachers and our texts. It’s us. We all deride some satisfaction by ridicule or cast others as irrelevant and inferior. That way, we , while enjoy momentary sense of group unity, are not challenged or forced to grow. Homo Erectus of the tribal village keep putting on blinders and finish the race (of life) by base instincts, ..full of pre-judgement, never evolve and explore the fullest potential of Homo sapiens in a global village. We should learn from the big Four, whose wealth catapult in such a short time.

Wish I had just left this page blank from the start. That way, you can read into it whatever you want.

First the disease. Then the vaccine. Finally the rush to spend to line people up for a jab.

Who are we going to enlist? Dead Presidents? X-Presidents? Or Presley (Elvis).

It’s called “pair-association”. The “Like” factor i.e. if I like Lady Gaga, I am more likely to buy VOCE VIVA.

Entertainment (pleasant) and Medicine (unpleasant) make unlikely bed-fellows; yet… from Snake Oil to Shampoo… they are a couple.

Elvis Presley was recruited for a Polio vaccination campaign….Michael J. Fox for Parkinson’s (and recently planned but scrapped, Dennis Quaid for a covid push – ironically, he played a Secret Service Agent in Vantage Point).

Besides the Church, Madison Avenue has done us a dis-service (by turning propaganda into an art form and a science): “buy this pass (indulgence) for Peter’s gate..” “think different”.

The hidden messages to monopolize our attention, behind those catch phrases and chants are:

• you are missing out….you should see that many (proof) of your friends and neighbors are buying , hence, you should play catch-up (he who dies with the most toys wins) and keep up your status (of being equal…..with the Jones, folks like us tend to do or buy this )
• the celebrity/hero you admire are choosing this or doing that… you should too (be all you can be, join the Army – incidentally, recent Presidents never followed this advice of “being all Presidential they can be”)
• conversely, the celebrity/hero you worship doesn’t like that….hence, neither should you (GOP? don a mask?)
• if you think it’s true, perhaps it is (Dems are gays, GOP’s tax less ….while hard data tend to disprove this).

It’s been since that experiment conducted by Pavlov (dog-meat-bell-saliva—–>dog-no meat-bell-saliva) that our society has been played by bad actors, from Strong-Man State to Consumer Society.

Tulip (as in century past mania in Holland) or Tweeter (as in Trump) bit by bit, tweet by tweet, we’re sucked in, 140 characters at a time while living in a Pavlovian post-truth world. Logic and consistency tells us to wait it out, the crowd can’t be wrong ( truth vs illusion) to follow-through….to persevere….tomorrow….soon….you’ll see…..just to find out the other side….of that proverbial Pavlov door is placebo.

Last century’s the Seekers, after selling all their possessions and waited all night for nothing, hugged one another in the morning, to self-congratulate on their faith – rationalizing their illusionary & vain pursuit – that it’s their tenacious faith that delayed End Times.

The antidote, per Walter Lippmann, who studied propaganda effects of WWI, is to stay out and away from crowd and chants, from what stirred but not shaken (truth mixed with untruth or half-truth). If Dracula were to appear in full form and in full light, we wouldn’t follow.

The Lt Governor of GA said it best on PBS Newshour: “At some point, people are going to realize they have been duped”. At the end of any slow-boiled experiment, all frogs realize they have been cooked.

BTW, because of false advertising (esp when it relates to health), we now have “Truth in advertising” and FDA.

Those guard-rails still stand despite many failed attempts to bend them.

Once upon a time, there was a disease, then the cure, then the rush jab…